The digital rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced Thursday it had discovered violations stemming from the FBI’s use of expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Documents obtained by the group as the result of pending Freedom of Information Act litigation suggest that abuses of surveillance powers granted by the PATRIOT Act had been flagged by the FBI.
KPRC news in Houston recently filmed a secret experiment by law enforcement agencies including the Dept. of Homeland Security of a drone intended to spy on Americans.
The drone uncovered during this investigation are not like the large, expensive models used by the military for targeted strikes on militants half a world away. These are manufactured by Insitu out of Bingen, Washington (corporate offices located in Australia), only weigh about 40 pounds (18.1 kg) before monitoring equipment is installed. This model has the capacity to stay airborne for up to a day.
Newly released FBI data offer evidence of the broad scope and complexity of the nation’s terrorist watch list, documenting a daily flood of names nominated for inclusion to the controversial list.
During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a “reasonable suspicion,” according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week. Read the rest of this entry »
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege Friday to try to stop a lawsuit over Bush-era wiretapping – the first time the Obama administration has done so under its new policy on such cases.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision in a California lawsuit challenging the warrantless wiretapping program begun after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Under the state secrets privilege, the government can have a lawsuit dismissed if hearing the case would jeopardize national security. Read the rest of this entry »
This kind of highly confidential document – pictured above – is rarely seen by the public.
These so-called “spotter cards” are issued by police to identify individuals they consider to be potential troublemakers because they have appeared at a number of demonstrations.
The photographs are drawn from police intelligence files. This card was apparently dropped at a demonstration against Britain’s largest arms fair in 2005.
H is Mark Thomas, the comedian and political activist. Asked why it was justifiable to put Thomas, who has no criminal record, on this card, the Metropolitan police replied: “We do not discuss intelligence we may hold in relation to individuals.”
Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?
Check out the Los Angeles Police Department’s creepy new public service announcement for its city-wide anti-terrorism iWatch program. The civilian program was launched earlier this month and is endorsed by 63 police chiefs around the country.
As social networking becomes a dominant feature of daily life, the secret state is increasingly surveilling electronic media for what it euphemistically calls “actionable intelligence.”
Take the case of Elliot Madison. The 41-year-old anarchist was arrested in Pittsburgh September 24 at the height of G20 protests.
Former FBI Official Confirms Buried Espionage & Corruption Cases
John M. Cole, a former FBI Counterintelligence and Counterespionage Manager, has publicly confirmed FBI’s decade long investigation of the former State Department Official. According to Cole, as in over one hundred cases involving Israeli espionage activities within the US government, this case too has been covered up and buried despite mountains of evidence collected.cover storyarticlepublished by CQ on covered up espionage cases involving Israel, Cole was quoted extensively:
Here is the public response from John Cole after the publication of The American Conservative magazine’s
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.
The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said.
Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.
Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions about the spy agency.
Posted by Brian 
